The Glory of Christ Displayed in Saul's Conversion

Please turn with me to Acts chapter 8. Just this past month the world witnessed a surprising and tragic chain of events that began on March 11 when Japan was hit by an 8.9 Richter earthquake, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in that region. That earthquake led to a tsunami, which led to several nuclear reactors melting down or nearly melting down. And the chain of events continue to ripple outward as that nation sorts through the destruction and massive loss of life and the world begins to feel the financial repercussions of the world’s 3rd largest economy in being brought to its knees in a day. But what I want to call your attention to is that these catastrophes were not independent of each other but were linked together in an interconnected chain of events.

In a minute we are going to read the account of the conversion of Saul, and we could tend to think of Saul’s conversion as an inspiring but unrelated story that Luke chose to insert here, but actually Saul’s conversion is linked together with a divinely orchestrated chain of events that move unstoppably to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth. Only these chain of events don’t leave a path of destruction and mounting death tolls in their wake but rather leave a path of salvation and mounting “life tolls” as thousands upon thousands receive eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ.

This chain of events began on Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the church. Filled with the Spirit, Peter and the church began to boldly preach the gospel, resulting in thousands getting saved in a very short period of time. Among these thousands was a Hellenistic Jew named Stephen. Stephen begins to preach the gospel in power and to perform signs and wonders and this gets him in hot water with the Jewish authorities. Soon he is standing on trial before the Sanhedrin and he offers a brilliant but not so diplomatic defense that enrages the Sanhedrin and they decide to stone Stephen. That must have felt pretty good because it triggers a great persecution against the church which causes the church to scatter to other parts of Judea. But that is a good thing because they boldly proclaim the gospel as they go.

Last week Matt showed how, propelled by this persecution, the gospel broke through a major barrier as Philip took the message of Christ to the despised half-breed Samaritans and thousands of the Samaritans found new life in Christ and were added to the church. So that’s one chain of events that are triggered by Stephen’s death.

But there is another chain of events that will be triggered by Stephen’s death that will have even further reaching repercussions for the gospel, and that’s what we’re going to be looking at today. Those chain of events begin with a young Pharisee named Saul who is particularly enraged against the church and determined to destroy it. Let’s pick up his story in chapter 8:1

Acts 8:1-3; 9:1-9 (pray)

Saul is on a rampage against the church. The words Luke uses describe a wild animal tearing apart its prey. Saul is doing his best to tear apart the church apart. And he’s not satisfied with damaging the church in Jerusalem so he gets papers giving him authority to arrest believers in Damascus. And he would have started ripping and tearing the church apart there except that something happens on the road to Damascus that he could not have expected: Saul comes face to face with the Jesus he is trying to destroy. Jesus appears to Saul in his resurrection glory – Acts 24 says that he shone brighter than the sun at noonday. Blinding glory. And Saul is knocked to the ground and blinded and humbled as Jesus tells him that when he persecutes the church, he is persecuting the risen Christ.

It would be difficult to overestimate the impact of this moment on the church and on history. The repercussions of Saul’s conversion would have an exponential effect on the advance of the gospel! Saul would become the great apostle Paul, who would become the focus of most of the rest of Acts; he would plant churches and reach areas no one else would. He would write ¼ of the New Testament, including the most powerful doctrinal expositions of the gospel in the Bible. The chain of events that would ripple out from the salvation of this one man are inestimable. But I don’t want to focus our attention on Saul this morning, but on the risen Christ Saul encounters, because ultimately Saul’s conversion isn’t a testimony about Saul, but a testimony about Christ and a wonderful display of Christ’s power and purpose and mercy that are meant as an example and encouragement to all believers.

Title: The Glory of Christ Displayed in the Conversion of Saul

There are many ways but we’re going to confine ourselves to just two:

I. Christ’s sovereign power is displayed in Saul’s conversion

I saw a skit years ago that portrayed rebellious young man running from giving his life to Jesus. A friend of mine played the part of Jesus in the skit and I can still see him standing off to the side with his arms open and whenever the rebel would cast a glance at Jesus, Jesus would look at him with these sad, puppy dog eyes and kind of gesture with his arms like “please come to me” which of course the rebel would just ignore. Now I appreciate that the skit sought to emphasize Jesus’ love and compassion for rebellious sinners and that is a beautiful biblical truth – Jesus himself said that he came to seek and save the lost.

But what bothered me is that it portrayed Jesus as loving but helpless. To be honest, the rebel was in control and Jesus just seemed kind of pathetic as he hoped the rebel would turn to him. That’s not the picture of Jesus we see in Acts and definitely not the Jesus we see here in chapter 9. Saul wasn’t a seeker, he wasn’t open to the gospel, and he didn’t come running to Jesus – he was hellbent on persecuting the church, and as he was, Jesus just kind of slammed him with his glory and power. Really what we’ve got here is a heavenly smackdown! Here’s the burden on my heart that I want us to see this morning. Jesus isn’t some heavenly hippie who hopes that if he just loves people enough they will come to him in faith. That’s just not who he is. Jesus is risen and glorious and rules and reigns in absolute authority and sovereignty.

So we’re going to wade into some deep weeds here but stay with me. What we see here is that Saul didn’t “decide for Christ”, Christ decided for Saul. In this, Saul was not unique. Like Saul, we were all enemies of God at one time – none of us had hearts that wanted God or truly searched for Him. Not one of us would ever have sought for God if God had not sought us first and drawn our hearts to Him. Now I realize this can bring up some difficult questions about how it is that some people are saved and some aren’t, and I appreciate the difficulty of those questions and I am not going to do a deep theological study on these questions this morning. A part of the answer is that there is mystery here and we will never fully resolve the mystery this side of eternity. What the Bible does not teach is determinism –determinism teaches that God is a Master Puppeteer pulling the strings and our actions, decisions and choices are all really His decisions just made to look as if they’re our own choices. The Bible is very clear that man has real responsibility – when we do evil it’s us doing evil, not God. God doesn’t do evil and He doesn’t lead us to do evil. We will answer to God for our choices precisely because they are our choices. And yet, and this is a mystery, but we need to believe what the Bible says even if it’s beyond our ability to understand fully, God is sovereign and nothing is out of His control and it’s His sovereign power that saves all those who are saved.

Bible teacher R.B.Kuiper once used a helpful illustration of the tension between God's sovereignty and human responsibility. He wrote:

I liken them to two ropes going through two holes in the ceiling and over a pulley above. If I wish to support myself by them, I must cling to them both. If I cling only to one and not the other, I go down. I read the many teachings of the Bible regarding God's election, predestination, his chosen, and so on. I read also the many teachings regarding 'whosoever will may come' and urging people to exercise their responsibility as human beings. These seeming contradictions cannot be reconciled by the puny human mind. With childlike faith, I cling to both ropes, fully confident that in eternity I will see that both strands of truth are, after all, of one piece.

Let’s hold to both ropes with childlike faith cause both are biblical: God is sovereign and man is responsible. On his way to arrest and bind Christians, Saul is himself arrested by the risen Christ and when he rises from the ground he is bound for life to the service of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. But it’s a bondage he will choose freely and happily. It’s not that Saul’s will was forced or coerced. Nothing in all of Saul’s life was ever chosen more freely and he would consider every other good thing in his life as dung in comparison with the treasure of knowing Christ, but his choice was irresistibly directed by God. It is a mystery – cling to both ropes in faith!

God doesn’t coerce us against our will to believe in Christ – but He does work in us so that we choose Him as the highest joy in life. God is sovereign and powerful beyond anything we can comprehend – we can’t understand it, but don’t box God into a little man-made box of what you and I can understand. Let God be God – and have faith in His all-powerful power. And let that faith inform your prayers for those you love who don’t know Jesus yet. Maybe they seem far from the Lord, maybe you can’t imagine them ever believing in Christ. Do you think anyone thought it possible that the Saul who was coming to kill and arrest Christians would become the greatest follower of Jesus the world has ever seen? Pray with confidence in God – pray with faith and ask for great things. God is able to do far more than we are able to think and ask – but we should ask for big things!! Christ’s sovereign power is displayed.

II. Christ’s scandalous purpose is displayed in Saul’s conversion (vv. 10-17)

God saved Saul with a specific purpose and call in mind, and we find that purpose revealed to Ananias in verses 15-16:

But the Lord said to him [Ananias], “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”

Saul would carry the gospel to the Gentiles. To the Jewish mind that would have been scandalous beyond belief. In Acts 22 (not going to turn there) Saul (now called Paul) is standing before a crowd of Hebrews making his defense and they’re all listening quietly to him, not having any problem with his testimony, until he gets to the part where Jesus tells him he is going to send him to the Gentiles. Verse 22 says Then they raised their voices and said, “away with such a fellow from the earth! For he should not be allowed to live.” They were filled with the same rage Saul once had for Jesus’ disciples and they wanted to kill him.

In their minds God had put a chasm between a practicing Jew and a Gentile and that chasm could never be crossed. For Paul to say that God had bridged the chasm and there was no longer any difference between Jew and Gentile but all needed to come to Jesus Christ in faith to be saved was incredibly offensive to them. But it was always God’s purpose – scandalous as it might have seemed to the Jews – to extend salvation to all peoples in all nations. Because of His great love and mercy for lost sinners, God’s heart is to see His gospel of forgiveness and salvation reach every corner of the earth and every person.

ILL: There was a kid in the middle school I attended who, for whatever reason, smelled really bad. I hate to be graphic, but everyday he smelled like he had had an accident in his pants. From my few interactions with him, he seemed like a nice enough kid and he badly wanted to fit in, but there wasn’t a kid in the class that would be caught dead associating with him. So there was everybody in the class and there was this poor kid who nobody would talk to (except to mock or play a joke on), nobody would sit next to, and nobody would offer any kind of friendship to. He was isolated, laughed at, rejected, shamed.

But I wasn’t. I was smug in the center of the “accepted” kids. I was in the know and joined in the laughter. This poor boy had done nothing to me, but he was on the outside and he was “unclean” so I rejected him like everyone else. So you had this chasm: he was unclean and stinky and the brunt of the jokes. We were clean and cool and accepted and were the ones who slung the jokes.

There is a kind of religion that can creep in if we’re not careful where we think we are the “incrowd” and accepted because of what we say or do or how we dress or look. And in that place we can get smug and self-righteous and slap each other’s backs and talk about all those “outsiders”. This kind of religion loses sight of the gospel and the heart of God.

The gospel says that Jesus died because we all stunk to God. And we are acceptable by God only because of the mercy and grace of God in Christ Jesus. So no one is too far “out there” and the heart of God should propel us as Christian to reach out and draw near to those who may seem farthest from God.

1. Don’t pick and choose who you will share the gospel with based on some external sense that they “are close” because maybe they’re more moral or more like you. The Gentiles seemed so far from God but received the word with joy! There was a church planter from Wales at the conference who was sharing that he is living in a post-Christian society – they have no religious background or interest. But they are easier to preach the gospel to because they don’t have a lot of religious baggage. Sometimes people who have a lot of “religion” think they know all about Jesus when they don’t know him at all. May the Lord give us boldness, GCC to witness to people that seem so far from Christ. (Ask band to come up)

2. And I want to close by talking to those here who are on a spiritual journey but aren’t Christians. I don’t want to offend you but the Bible says that your sin stinks to God. That’s true of all of us. Our hearts are filled with rebellion and greed and lust and selfishness and stuff that is a foul stench to God. But Jesus did more than draw near to us in our sin, he took the foul stench of our sin upon himself and as he hung on the cross he bore our sins before God as if he had committed every one of them. He did that so that our sins could be forgiven and the filth of our sins cleansed without compromising God’s justice.

Jesus showed his amazing mercy by saving his worst enemy, Saul. He is ready to save all who call upon his name and believe in him. No one is beyond the reach of Christ, and no one is beyond the love of Christ. As we close in prayer, if you want to know the forgiveness of God and the transforming power of Jesus Christ, just reach out and talk to God. That’s what prayer is – not complicated, just talking to God.

If you don’t feel like you’re ready but you want to know if God is real and Jesus Christ is real, ask him to show you and convince you of His reality and His love. Let's pray together.

Let’s pray.